A thermal and acoustic co-simulation method for the multi-domain optimization of nearly zero energy buildings

Abstract

In the last years, the Nearly Zero Energy Building (or NZEB) concept has become one of the main targets to drive the built environment towards a sustainable future. Advanced methodologies and tools have been developed to support the complex NZEB design problem considering multiple objectives and the renovated interest for building occupants’ wellbeing has highlighted the need for integrating energy and comfort aspects for a holistic vision of the future NZEB. This work intends to advance in the ongoing discussion about comfort-driven NZEB design and develop a new multi-tool multi-objective simulation-based optimization methodology to integrate energy, cost and acoustic performance in the search for the NZEB optimal design. The proposed approach relies on the coupling between an energy model in TRNSYS®, a sound insulation model developed in Matlab® and the PSO algorithm to drive the optimization through the GenOpt® tool. After theoretical elaboration of the so-defined optimization problem, the method was applied to a French single-family case study. The applied methodology identifies several non-obvious solutions that are near-optimal for all the three objectives and shows that the traditional cost-optimized NZEB design would lead to low sound insulation performance, revealing the potential for a full exploitation of synergies between thermal and acoustic domains in high-performance buildings, reinforcing the need for further investigation in the field.